34 Unmissable Gallery Shows to See in New York City This November

The editors at artnet News searched New York City high and low for the most exciting, bizarre, and thought-provoking gallery exhibitions this November. From Chelsea to the Lower East Side, we’ve got you covered.

Nikolas Gambaroff. Courtesy of the Kitchen.

1. “Nikolas Gambaroff: The Last Days of Mankind” at the Kitchen
For his first solo exhibition in New York, Nikolas Gambaroff responds to The Last Days of Mankind, a satirical drama by early 20th-century Austrian playwright Karl Kraus. Written in 213 scenes and essentially impossible to perform, the play offers a searing critique of the ways language can be twisted to serve nationalistic ends—a message that resonated with Gambaroff in the age of so-called fake news. He is presenting painted collages and sculpture against a painted theatrical backdrop.

2. “Devan Shimoyama: Sweet” at De Buck Gallery
Devan Shimoyama’s self-portraiture is a joyous representation of the black queer male body. In his first show at De Buck, he’s debuting seven paintings of other gay black men in barber shops, a space where he often felt the need to hide his sexuality. “After discussing with other men who share my identity as a gay black man, I realized many of us find ways to mask our queerness in this setting regardless to how out and proud we are in our personal lives,” he says in his artist statement. “In these paintings, these boys and men are reimagined in a much more celebratory, femme, colorfully queer setting.”

3. “Valeska Soares: Neither Here Nor There” at Alexander Gray Associates
Five antique tables with mirrored tops will take up much of the second floor at Alexander Gray Associates in the gallery’s first exhibition of Brazilian-born New York artist Valeska Soares. The piece, Epilogue, is an expansion of her 2013 installation Finale and features an array of assorted vintage cups, each partially filled with liquor, the apparent aftermath of a festive gathering.

5. “Gerard Byrne: In Our Time” at Lisson Gallery
If you didn’t make it to Skulptur Projekte Münster over the summer, this is your chance to see Gerard Byrne’s video installation In Our Time, depicting the goings-on inside a recreation of a 1970s- or ’80s-era radio station.

6. “Phil Collins” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Phil Collins presents two recent film works: Delete Beach, an anime film about a schoolgirl in an anti-capitalist resistance group, presented in an installation; and Tomorrow Is Always Too Long (2014), a documentary musical shot in Glasgow.

7. “Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the ’80s” at Pace
In the 1980s, Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007) began making her critically acclaimed shaped canvases. With key loans from major institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Pace—which presented her 1970s paintings in 2011—looks back at this key period in her career.

8. “Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943–47” at Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth presents its first showing of the work of Arshile Gorky (1904–48), curated by Arshile Gorky Foundation president Saskia Spender, the artist’s granddaughter. With over 50 landscapes inspired by his 1943, 1944, and 1946 stays at Crooked Run Farm, his in-law’s Virginia homestead, the exhibition is the first in New York of the artist’s mature work. The show is accompanied by the new book Ardent Nature: Arshile Gorky Landscapes, 1943–47, from Hauser & Wirth Publishers.

9. “Jessica Jackson Hutchins: The People’s Cries” at Marianne Boesky Gallery
Look to the ceiling at Marianne Boesky Gallery, where Jessica Jackson Hutchins has installed some of her new experimental fused glass works as skylights. The pieces feature portraits of activists including Angela Davis and phrases and symbols of resistance, elevating their cause—and the titular “people’s cries”—to an art form usually reserved for religious iconography.

10. “Hassel Smith” at Washburn Gallery
Bay Area artist Hassel Smith (1915–2007) has only ever had one show in New York, back in 1961. Washburn Gallery returns to that era with an exhibition of abstract works painted by the artist between 1959 and 1961, when he was represented by Irving Blum’s Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.

11. “(The Ray Lee Project Vol. 1) NDD Immersion Room” by Rachel Lee Hovnanian at Victori + Mo
During Armory Week, Rachel Lee Hovnanian posed as Ray Lee, a male artist, when she presented the NDD Immersion Room at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Now, she is showing the piece under her real name, inviting viewers to surrender their phones before one by one entering a dark room that has been transformed into a forest, complete with fallen leaves and the sound of crickets. In order to combat so-called “Nature Deficit Disorder,” and create a calming sensation, at least a 10-minute session is recommended.

12. “Jorge Tacla: Sign of Abandonment” at Cristin Tierney Gallery
Ahead of his exhibition at the Fundación CorpArtes in Santiago, Chile, opening November 21, Jorge Tacla presents a series of new paintings. His architectural scenes, rendered in oil and cold wax, feature some of the world’s most important museums, libraries, and universities, but with an unsettling lack of human visitors. In these politically contentious times, the artist hopes to remind the viewer of the importance of studying the lessons of history.

Here, facing mortality at the age of 61, Levy is showcasing not only her art but her personal possessions, like her prom dress, in a 200-object show. The artist invites gallery-goers to tell her which pieces they would like to inherit when she dies and will draw up an official will parceling them out at the exhibition’s closing. “This,” she said in a statement, “is my (crude?) attempt to deal with the inevitable and have some fun with it.”

New York may not be getting the artist’s traveling blockbuster exhibition—which opened at the Broad in Los Angeles last month and is on view through January 1—but the Kusama extravaganza still packs a punch. It will include two new Infinity Mirror Rooms, 66 paintings from the “My Eternal Soul”series, and the US premiere of With All My Love For The Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011), a sculptural installation of oversized tulip sculptures in flower pots that, along with the surrounding room, are covered in red polka dots. (Kusama’s New York takeover also includes a showing of four paintings at the Judd Foundation through December 9.)

15. “Jim Shaw” at Metro Pictures
Jim Shaw returns to New York for the first time following his 2015 New Museum survey, “The End Is Here,” with a number of sculptures as well as a series of paintings rife with allusions to comics, the Bible, and the mythological tale of the rape of Europa, a popular subject among the Old Masters. (The artist also is currently the subject of his first major Los Angeles exhibition, on view at the Marciano Art Foundation through January 13.)

16. “Sam Gilliam: 1967–1973” at Mnuchin GallerySam Gilliam‘s late 1960s and early 1970s “Beveled-edge” and “Drape” paintings will be the subject of his first New York gallery show in nearly 25 years. These groundbreaking early works, often folded and crumpled while the paint was still wet, stand apart from the typical output of Gilliam’s Color Field contemporaries, utilizing canvases with beveled edges that break the 2-D plane.

17. “Ileana Sonnabend and Arte Povera” at Lévy Gorvy
This fall marks the 50th anniversary of Arte Povera. Art historian Germano Celant, who coined the term, has curated an exhibition spotlighting the key part played by dealer Ileana Sonnabend in the movement’s international rise. The show reunites work, most of which was first shown by Sonnabend, from the likes of Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, and Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Installation view of Brian Rochefort’s Cups (2016) in Brussels. Courtesy of the artist.

18. “Brian Rochefort” at Van Doren Waxter
The first New York solo show for Brian Rochefort comprises richly textured porcelain works, smashed into pieces before firing and then put back together with mud and clay. Featuring spills, cracks, and other imperfections at once awkward and beautiful, his vessels are embellished with layers of neon glaze. The bravely non-utilitarian “craters” series is inspired by a wide range natural landscapes, from volcanic lava fields to barrier reefs.

19. “London Painters” at Ordovas
Postwar London painters Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj, and Leon Kossoff have become known as the “School of London.” Ordovas gives the group their first dedicated New York show, with a selection of portraits and London landscapes, many of which have never been exhibited in the US.

9 East 77th Street, November 3, 2017–January 18, 2018.

Nynke Koster, A Part of New York History (2017), detail. Courtesy of LMAK Gallery.

20. “Nynke Koster: A Part of New York History” at LMAK Gallery
Intrigued by the often overlooked history of the Dutch in New York, Nynke Koster began studying the city’s early history, thereby discovering that the slave trade was a cornerstone of its economy. A Part of New York History, a massive sculpture made from the cast rubber thumbs of the descendants of slaves, is a tribute to those slaves laid to rest at the African American Burial Grounds near City Hall, rediscovered in the 1990s. The piece will run the full length of the gallery.

22. “Katharina Fritsch” at Matthew Marks Gallery
In her show of all new work, Katharina Fritsch continues her practice of transforming ordinary objects into unnerving sculptures in bright colors and larger-than-life sizes. She’ll present a massive blue strawberry and a 10-foot-tall pale green cowry shell, among other pieces that are at once familiar and utterly bizarre.

23. “Alfredo Volpi” at Gladstone
Gladstone gives Brazilian Modernist Alfredo Volpi (1896–1988) his first US solo show, with many pieces that have never left Brazil. Employing his distinct style, the self-taught artist transformed everyday scenes into colorful abstractions.

24. “Alex Katz” at Gavin Brown’s enterprise
Now 90, Alex Katz shows no signs of slowing down, presenting a selection of paintings from the last two years. Expect large-scale landscapes and portraits displaying his signature virtuosity of line and color.

25. “Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Backwards Forward” at James Cohan
Reviving the Renaissance craft of marquetry, Alison Elizabeth Taylor combines inlaid wood, pyrography, painting, photography, and sculpture to create her own unique medium. Her fifth solo show at James Cohan will feature all new work, inspired by life in her hometown of Las Vegas. Taylor blends her photographs of people in casinos with aerial photography from NASA, a process she has dubbed “Frankensteining.”

26. “Mary Frank Pilgrimage: Photographs and Recent Sculpture” at DC Moore
For the last 10 years, Mary Frank has focused on photographing her fantasy-tinged assemblages, featuring collage, drawing, and painting as well as natural elements such as charred wood, stone, flowers, ice, and fire. On the occasion of the publication of her new book from Eakins Press Foundation, Pilgrimage: Photographs of Mary Frank, DC Moore is showing a selection of the artist’s painted stone sculptures as well as 60 recent photographs.

27. “Lee Krasner: The Umber Paintings, 1959–1962” at Paul Kasmin Gallery
Following the death of her husband Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), Lee Krasner (1908–1984) began making her first large-scale canvases. In 1959, she began her “Umber Paintings” series, making 24 paintings in shades of black, white, and umber over the next three years, as artistic manifestations of her still-raw grief. The gallery will also release art historian David Anfam’s new catalogue raisonné on the series to coincide with the exhibition.

293 Tenth Avenue, November 9, 2017–January 13, 2018.

Deborah Roberts. Courtesy of Fort Gansevoort.

28. “Deborah Roberts: in-gé-nue” at Fort Gansevoort
Blending photography, painting, and drawing, Deborah Roberts addresses depictions of beauty in art history and popular culture, and how they affect how black women view themselves. Her collages, with multiple gazes vibrating off the page, illustrate what Roberts sees as the lack of a single, easily understood identity for black women. This is the artist’s first New York solo show.

29. “Nina Chanel Abney: Seized the Imagination” at Jack ShainmanIn her first show at Jack Shainman, Nina Chanel Abney will tackle racism, sexism, climate change, and other complex subjects. The dejected tone of her paintings, which suggest that none of these pressing issues ultimately matter, belie their cheerful, colorful appearance.

30. “Anton Ginzburg: Staring and Cursing” at Fridman Gallery
Born in Russia in 1974, Anton Ginzburg responds to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution and its complicated legacy in this show of new work. Attempting to bridge the gap between the Russian avant-garde and Western modernism, Ginzburg has created a new series of paintings, a site-specific mural, and a large porcelain sculpture.

Richard Avedon, The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Convention, Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC, October 15, 1963. Courtesy of Pace/MacGill.

31. “Richard Avedon: Nothing Personal” at Pace/MacGill
Photographer Richard Avedon and writer and social critic James Baldwin were high school friends. In 1964, they teamed up on the book Nothing Personal, examining the state of life in the US during the Civil Rights era through Avedon’s photographs and an accompanying four-part essay by Baldwin. Long out of print, it will be reissued by Taschen in January. In the meantime, Pace and Pace/MacGill, now representing the Avedon Foundation, presents the first exhibition based on the book, with photographs and archival materials.

537 West 24th Street, November 17, 2017–January 13, 2018

Kevin Amato. Courtesy of SVA Chelsea Gallery.

32. “Street Smart: The Intersection of Art and Design in the City” at the School of Visual Arts Chelsea Gallery
SVA has put together this group show of 19 alumni who take New York City as their muse. The multimedia exhibition includes politically and socially engaged interactive installations, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and illustrations.

33. “Lois Dodd: Selected Paintings” at Alexandre Gallery
Lois Dodd’s landscape paintings, created in New York City and rural New Jersey and Maine, offer masterful depictions of the changing seasons and the quality of light at different times of day and the year. The exhibition coincides with the release of her first monograph, written by critic Faye Hirsch.

34. “Lynn Stern: Skull” at Taka Ishii GallerySkull, Lynn Stern’s new monograph with text by critic Donald Kuspit, showcases the photographer’s fascination with death, a major theme in her work over the last 25 years. On view at Taka Ishii Gallery will be almost the entirety of her 1991 “Skull” series, her first photos to embrace this morbid subject matter, as well as more recent work included in the book.